Debra Chasnoff, Oscar-winning artist and activist, dies

Updated 12:30 am, Saturday, November 11, 2017

Debra Chasnoff chats with parents in 2004 before a San Francisco screening of her documentary “Let's Get Real,” which addressed bullying in middle school.

Debra Chasnoff chats with parents in 2004 before a San Francisco screening of her documentary “Let's Get Real,” which addressed bullying in middle school.

Photo: LIZ HAFALIA, SFC

Debra Chasnoff, Oscar-winning artist and activist, dies

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Debra Chasnoff, an Oscar-winning director and a stalwart, inspirational figure in the Bay Area’s rich community of documentary filmmakers, died at her San Francisco home Tuesday of metastatic breast cancer. She was 60.

An activist who saw films as tools for social change, Ms. Chasnoff, known as “Chas” to friends and colleagues, made 12 documentaries, most often on the struggles of gays and lesbians. She won her Oscar in 1992 for “Deadly Deception: General Electric, Nuclear Weapons and Our Environment,” an expose of the energy giant’s production of nuclear weapons, and made Academy Award history when she came out as lesbian by thanking her female partner of the time, Kim Klausner.

“She was a brilliant filmmaker,” said Joyce Newstat, former policy director for Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom. “At the same time, she was a visionary, and the issues she was making films about mattered deeply to her — whether it be lesbians choosing children, or environmental justice, or the nuclear weapons industry, or gay marriage.”

Ms. Chasnoff’s first film, “Choosing Children” (1985), told an upbeat story of gay men and lesbians making the decision to become parents. She and Klausner, who co-directed the film, were childless at the time but later had two sons, Noah Chasnoff, 29, and Oscar Klausner, 23. The couple separated in 1996.

In 1999, Ms. Chasnoff was the target of a right-wing suppression campaign when “It’s Elementary,” a film for children about antigay prejudice, was set to be broadcast on PBS stations across the country. D. James Kennedy of Coral Ridge Ministries in Florida called the film “propaganda … for the homosexual lifestyle” and radio host Laura Schlessinger declared, “We are being intimidated to accept deviancy.”

“She was ahead of her time on social issues,” said Oscar-nominated Berkeley filmmaker Rick Goldsmith (“The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers”), “but never backed down when attacked.”

“She had to face this very targeted vitriol when the right wing was focused on her,” said Lauretta Molitor, a sound recordist who worked on several of Ms. Chasnoff’s films. “She was so brave and so graceful in the way she handled that.”

“It’s taken a big toll personally,” Ms. Chasnoff told The Chronicle in a 1999 interview, “but I feel like politically it’s been incredibly important and fruitful. There isn’t a day that goes by where we don’t get a very moving letter or email or phone call from someone who’s incredibly moved” by “It’s Elementary.”

Born in 1957 in Philadelphia and raised by secular Jewish parents in a suburb of Washington, Ms. Chasnoff had roots in progressive politics that influenced her choices as a filmmaker. Her father, Joel Chasnoff, a former member of the Maryland House of Delegates, and mother Sue, a psychologist, raised their family in a racially diverse neighborhood and were involved in organizing on civil rights issues.

Ms. Chasnoff received a bachelor’s degree from Wellesley College in Massachusetts in 1978, lived in Boston for several years and moved to San Francisco in 1985. After “Choosing Children” and “Deadly Deception,” she made “Respect for All,” a video series for schoolchildren that included “It’s Elementary,” the anti-bullying film “Let’s Get Real” (2003), and “Straightlaced: How Gender’s Got Us All Tied Up” (2009), which addressed gender identity and pressure on teens to conform.

In 1992, Ms. Chasnoff and frequent co-producer Helen Cohen founded the nonprofit Women’s Educational Media to provide educational curricula related to their films. In 1997, they joined New Day Films, a filmmaker-run distribution company for social-issue films; Ms. Chasnoff served twice as the organization’s chair.

When Newsom, as San Francisco mayor, issued the first same-sex marriage licenses in February 2004, Ms. Chasnoff filmed the wedding of trailblazing lesbian activists Del Martin, 82, and Phyllis Lyon, 79, and made the film “One Wedding and a Revolution.”

In June 2015, Ms. Chasnoff was diagnosed with cancer. “It was like going from zero to 100,” said Nancy Otto, her wife and partner of 17 years. “We had just accepted positions at a university in China, teaching in the journalism department. We had already sent in our syllabus; we were going to go that fall. And this happened.

“Chas essentially sat with this and incorporated this new reality,” she continued. “One of the first things she said was, ‘All right, I’m going to document this whole journey.’ She just filmed every doctor’s appointment. She got UCSF to agree for her to film all her tests, all her treatments. She knew this was one of the last things she could offer.”

“When the oncologist would call at 9:30 p.m.,” her son Noah Chasnoff added, “someone would take out their cell phone and start filming.”

The footage will eventually be shaped into a film by a collective of Ms. Chasnoff’s filmmaker friends. “It’s still being figured out,” Otto said, “but the main focus is her ability to live fully when given such a prognosis. I think that’s what she wanted to help people with: How do you have hope and with each day have joy in it.”

For a year and a half after her diagnosis, Otto said, Ms. Chasnoff remained vibrant with a regimen of acupuncture, Buddhist meditation, qigong and a healthy diet. During the last eight months, when the struggle intensified, an intimate network of friends gathered to assist Ms. Chasnoff and Otto with prepared meals and emotional support, paperwork and errands, transportation to appointments, group meditation and assistance with medicine.

Only three weeks before her death, Ms. Chasnoff celebrated her 60th birthday at her Noe Valley home. “She was up till 1:30 in the morning, dancing, partying,” Otto said. “She was so happy.”

In the Bay Area independent film community, the news of Ms. Chasnoff’s death was met with sadness and alarm. Her films, said Oscar-nominated Oakland filmmaker Frances Reid (“Long Night’s Journey Into Day”), “reflected Chas’ strong belief that filmmaking was a political act and that films could change people’s minds and attitudes. She never wavered from that belief, and she imbued both her work and her life with a powerful sense of possibility.”

“She was down-to-earth and accessible to everyone on a personal level,” Goldsmith said. “Her professional power and personal warmth inspired and helped countless young filmmakers to find their own voices.”

In addition to her wife, Nancy Otto, and sons, Noah and Oscar, Ms. Chasnoff is survived by her father, Joel Chasnoff; sister, Lori Langford of Marshall, Va.; and brother, Jordan Chasnoff of Washington, D.C.

A memorial service will be held from 3 to 5 p.m. Nov. 28 at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, 5000 Sir Francis Drake Blvd., Woodacre. The family suggests memorial contributions to Ms. Chasnoff’s production company, Groundspark, or to Spirit Rock Meditation Center.

Edward Guthmann is a Bay Area freelance writer and a former San Francisco Chronicle staff writer.